'True, my old friend, that is bad all over the world. You cannot presume to ask anything even from the Deity Himself, without paying the priest who officiates in His temples; and if you should, you would none of you hope to get from your Deity what you asked for.'
Here the crowd laughed again, and one of them said that 'there was this certainly to be said for our Government, that the European gentlemen themselves never took bribes, whatever those under them might do'.
'You must not be too sure of that, neither. Did not the Lāl Bībī, the Red Lady, get a bribe for soliciting the judge, her husband, to let go Amīr Singh, who had been confined in jail?'
'How did this take place?'
'About three years ago Amīr Singh was sentenced to imprisonment, and his friends spent a great deal of money in bribes to the native officers of the court, but all in vain. At last they were recommended to give a handsome present to the Red Lady. They did so, and Amīr Singh was released.'
'But did they give the present into the lady's own hand?'
'No, they gave it to one of her women.'
'And how do you know that she ever gave it to her mistress, or that her mistress ever heard of the transaction?'
'She might certainly have been acting without her mistress' knowledge; but the popular belief is that the Lāl Bībī got the present.'
I then told the story of the affair at Jubbulpore, when Mrs. Smith's name had been used for a similar purpose, and the people around us were all highly amused; and the old man's opinion of the transaction with the Red Lady evidently underwent a change.[10]